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This is that kind of post that are more necessary to me for remembering than anything else. Lots of digital ink has already been spent on this topic, but, as others I guess, I find that writing down things helps me remembering them (and mind-maps are precious on that front).

VirtualBox Clone Operation

I have a couple of local virtual machines installation for Ubuntu desktop and Ubuntu server, usually the latest LTS ones, and I clone them as I needed: I need to test some scripts, or the installation of a program, like it was being performed on a real installation.

VirtualBox has this nice little feature of creating clones of your virtual machines, and in no time you are up an running with a clean environment (as long as you remembered to take a snapshots at a good point in time).

The Error

When you clone a virtual machine, you are cloning everything of it, configurations included. And that’s where the problem is. The network will not work at all, and ifconfig will tell you that there is no interface configured.

The Solution

The solutions lies in one file:

/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

Open that file with your editor, remove the offending line and reboot.

In this case the offending line is an erroneous “eth*” interface, that will results in multiple network entries in that file when just one is needed. Pay attention to the MAC address of the network interface though.

Being overwhelmed by passwords, for all the disparate websites you have to login to, plus trying to keep safe password for personal and work activities without sharing the same ones, was starting to get harder. Too many websites, to much passwords.

The Last Password to Remember

As a colleague of mine suggested, I tried out LastPass. A nicely done online services that offers you the possibility to have a secure password vault where to store your passwords and identities. LastPass integrates also with your browser and helps you:

Filling out forms: you can store all your credentials and credit card info too

Logging into the stored web sites, also automatically if you tell it so

Creating one time and secure passwords

Updating the passwords when it detects you are changing them

And lots more…

You can even use it with a YubiKey and with Google Autheticator for a two-factors authentication, and it also has a “security challenge” where it tells you if any of your accounts were compromised or how strong are your passwords. The service is really well done and provides you with a smooth experience (even if the graphical web interface is not the best around).

But it is not open source. This is the kind of service I would like to have as a truly open source project. Are there any open source project like this out there?